The so-far known processes for producing 2-fluoro-4(trifluoromethyl)acetanilide as described in J. Org. Chem., 50, 4576 (1985) and EP-A-0246061 may be illustrated as follows: ##STR1##
However, these processes are not necessarily satisfactory for the commercial production of 2-fluoro-4(trifluoromethyl)acetanilide. That is to say, trifluoromethyl hypofluorite is hardly available because of the necessity of special fluorine-handling techniques, while xenon difluoride is an expensive reagent and the fluorination therewith is not very regioselective, hence the purity of the product is not good. Furthermore, these processes give only low yields and cannot be said to be advantageous from the commercial standpoint,